Motivational Quotes

Government

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

- Sir Winston Churchill

Best Quotes about Government

All good government must begin at home.

Haweis, H. R.

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

H. L. Mencken

It is function of government to invent philosophies to explain the demands of its own convenience.

Kempton, Murray

So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

Sir Winston Churchill

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Jefferson, Thomas

The Athenians govern the Greeks; I govern the Athenians; you, my wife, govern me; your son governs you.

Themistocles

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us.

President Barack Obama

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

Reston, James

10.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

11.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

Gladstone, William E.

12.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

Mills, C. Wright

13.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. [The Motto Of The U.S. Postal Service]

Herodotus

14.

In our consumer confidence surveys, we ask people whether they think government economic policy is good, fair, or poor. Increasingly, the answer we get is just plain laughter.

Schmiedeskamp, Jay

15.

An educated people can be easily governed.

Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)

16.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life -- this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

O'Rourke, P. J.

17.

If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along; do your best and when you have to -- and you will -- leave, and be something else.

Noonan, Peggy

18.

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate government action.

Russell, Bertrand

19.

When any government, or church for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects,this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motive.

Heinlein, Robert

20.

The government must always be a step ahead of the popular movement.

Boytzwnburg, Count

21.

The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.

Melbourne, Lord

22.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

William H. Borah

23.

Of the best rulers, The people only know that they exist; the next best they love and praise the next they fear; and the next they revile. When they do not command the people's faith, some will lose faith in them, and then they resort to oaths! But of the best when their task is accomplished, their work done, the people all remark, We have done it ourselves.

Lao-Tzu

24.

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Macaulay, Thomas B.

25.

Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law.

Solon

26.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

Lawson, Nigel

27.

The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

Welch, Robert

28.

Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?

Cervantes, Miguel De

29.

That state is best ordered when the wicked have no command, and the good have.

Pittacus

30.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Jefferson, Thomas

31.

Good government is the outcome of private virtue.

Chapman, John Jay

32.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Bastiat, Frederic

33.

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Wilson, Harold

34.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Reagan, Ronald

35.

Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Crockett, Davy

36.

Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Washington, George

37.

Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a taxing-machine; to the contented, a machine for securing property. Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.

Carlyle, Thomas

38.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Socrates

39.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

Thoreau, Henry David

40.

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the money touch, but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

Roosevelt, Theodore

41.

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Kennedy, John F.

42.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

43.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

44.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

45.

Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

46.

The constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

Douglas, William O.

47.

Believe me - the Government will help you anytime it needs you.

Kocher, Gerhard

48.

In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts. While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion, the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power, becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

49.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

Voltaire

50.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Franklin, Benjamin